Dinners for Churchill were about more than good food, excellent champagnes and Havana cigars. He used the dinner table both as a stage on which to display his brilliant conversational talents, and an intimate setting in which to glean gossip and diplomatic insights. Stelzer draws on previously untapped material, diaries of guests, and other sources to tell of some of the key dinners at which Churchill presided before, during, and after World War II—including the important conferences at which he used his considerable skills to attempt to persuade his allies, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, to fight the war according to his strategic vision.